1. Field of the Disclosure
The technology of the disclosure relates to fiber optic housings for supporting fiber optic equipment, including but not limited to fiber optic equipment that provides interconnect and/or cross-connect capabilities between optical components and opto-electrical components using fiber optic cables, and more particularly to fiber management devices that can be provided in the fiber optic housings to assist in optical fiber management.
2. Technical Background
Benefits of optical fiber include extremely wide bandwidth and low noise operation. Because of these advantages, optical fiber is increasingly being used for a variety of applications, including but not limited to broadband voice, video, and data transmission. Fiber optic networks employing optical fiber are being developed and used to deliver voice, video, and data transmissions to subscribers over both private and public networks. These fiber optic networks often include separated connection points linking optical fibers to provide a contiguous fiber optic link from one connection point to another connection point. In this regard, fiber optic equipment is located in data distribution centers or central offices to support interconnections.
The fiber optic equipment is customized based on the application need. The fiber optic equipment is typically included in housings designed to support the fiber optic equipment, which are mounted in equipment racks to optimize use of space. One example of such fiber optic equipment is a fiber optic module/cassette. A fiber optic module/cassette is designed to provide cable-to-cable fiber optic connections and manage the polarity of fiber optic cable connections. A fiber optic module or cassette is mounted to a chassis or housing that is specifically designed to support fiber optic modules and cassettes. Another example of such fiber optic equipment is a fiber optic panel (also referred to as a “patch panel”). A fiber optic panel is designed to provide connection or termination points for optical fiber. A fiber optic panel typically includes fiber optic adapters that are configured to receive fiber optic connectors connected to the optical fiber to be connected or terminated. A fiber optic panel is typically mounted to a chassis or housing that is specifically designed to support fiber optic panels.
Due to the volume of optical fiber connections that may be made to these various types of fiber optic equipment that can be supported in a fiber optic housing, it may be important to provide fiber management. For example, fiber management can be provided to route optical fibers to and from a fiber optic housing in an orderly fashion. In this manner, optical fibers can be accessed and connections made and/or reconfigured to the fiber optic equipment supported in the fiber optic housing. Fiber management can also be provided to include slack storage for storing additional lengths of slack in optical fiber and fiber optic cable in case fiber optic connections made by the optical fiber and fiber optic cables are moved and/or reconfigured to require additional length. However, fiber management devices can consume internal volume of a fiber optic housing that can make access to fiber optic equipment supported therein more difficult. Fiber optic management devices can also consume valuable space in the fiber optic housing that can reduce the capacity of the housing to support fiber optic equipment, thus reducing the fiber optic connection capacity of the fiber optic housing.